How Jesse Schell Trains the Next Generation of Game Designers at Carnegie Mellon
Jesse Schell (INI ‘93) is probably best known for the games he’s made. As a Disney Imagineer, he created the enormously successful multiplayer online roleplaying game “Toontown Online.” After leaving Disney, he founded the game studio Schell Games, where he continues to work as CEO. And since 2002, he’s also been a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) where he’s made a point of laying the foundation for the next generation of game designers.
For the first time since 2020, Schell is back in the classroom. He’s teaching Game Design, where students get a crash course in the fundamental principles — whether they’re designing board games or video games.
“The key is that it’s never actually about teaching tech. It’s always about getting students to understand how the mind really works, because for any successful entertainment you have to understand how the mind works and what it wants,” Schell said.
Schell emphasized that his teaching style is focused on making students think long and hard about what they’re working on. He said that students learn best when they have to solve problems for themselves, although he makes sure they have the tools they need to figure it out.
“There are so many fast explorations that happen at the ETC that are so far ahead of industry that I get an incredible benefit just by seeing the work,” Schell said. “Very often, I’ll be in an industry situation and someone will say ‘we should use this piece of technology,’ and I’ll be able to talk about a project I saw at Carnegie Mellon that tried it out … and so I can say what worked and didn’t work. The ETC has been a reliable leadership factory for the entertainment industry for a long time.”
Schell is also working to help eliminate barriers for students to learn at the ETC. Recently, Schell Games established a named fellowship that covers the two-year cost of the program so that recipients can study game design regardless of their financial background.
Schell’s work as an educator also extends beyond the ETC. In 2008, he wrote the book “The Art Of Game Design: A Book Of Lenses.” It’s now on its third edition, and is used by numerous colleges and universities to teach the subject.
“Some students have told me that the reason that they came to the ETC was because they read the book,” said Schell. “Writing ‘The Art of Game Design’ while working at the ETC was very much a ‘chicken-and-the-egg’ situation, because I was taking what I knew worked in my classroom and writing it down.”
Schell also draws from other experience when teaching and writing. Schell started his career as a professional juggler, and he’s still known for his circus skills; each year, he visits the Building Virtual Worlds class to teach first-year ETC students how to juggle.
When he started working at Disney Imagineering, he brought his experience as an entertainer together with his background in computer science. During his 7 years at Disney, Schell worked on a variety of projects including “Toontown Online.”
“For me, the most rewarding part of game development is bringing a game to life that nobody expected,” Schell said. “Toontown was the first MMORPG [massively multiplayer online roleplaying game] that let children and families play together. It’s really meaningful to look for the underserved audiences that are going to be so delighted with games that focus on them.”
Schell first heard about the ETC when he was still working at Disney. “We were hiring interns from the ETC, and I was really impressed with them,” he said. “So when I decided to move back East I reached out to [ETC co-founder] Randy Pausch and ended up teaching here.”
Shawn Patton (ETC ‘03) first met Schell when he was an intern at Disney and they returned to Pittsburgh at the same time: Schell so he could teach at the ETC, and Patton so he could finish the second year of the program. Today, Patton is a Principal Design Manager at Schell Games.
“Working with Jesse for the past 24 years has been a delight,” Patton said. “There was a point where he asked me if I wanted to come work at the company [Schell Games] that he was building, and it’s a testament to his talent and drive that I said, ‘yeah sure, I’ll move states and stake the next few years of my life on that gamble.’”
Founded in 2002, Schell Games is the largest independent game studio in Pittsburgh. The company is best known for their work in the virtual reality (VR) space games: an area that Schell first began working in when completing his masters degree at Carnegie Mellon University’s Information Networking Institute.
“I’m in this weird position, because when VR came into the consumer space 10 years ago I felt incredibly prepared,” said Schell. “I’ve been doing it for 30 straight years, in my grad program and then at Disney and teaching at CMU, so naturally Schell Games also became involved with VR. We’ve shipped 20 to 30 games, and it’s been exciting watching the medium expand and grow.”
For Schell, his teaching career is fueled by the same passion that led him to focus on VR games.
“For me, it always comes back to creating things that feel magical, so VR is one of my favorites because it has so much potential to create magical experiences,” Schell said. “I always like being on the frontier of what’s possible.”